8 ms·
Web apps built with Ruby on Rails
- kyrylo 2y agoI’ve always wondered who else uses Ruby on Rails besides the usual names like GitHub, Shopify, Basecamp, etc. Last month, I built a directory of web apps built with the Rails framework. With Rails 8 released last year, the framework is stronger than ever. Some even say it’s experiencing a renaissance. There are already 21 submissions, and if you use Rails, you’re welcome to add your app or website!
- desireco42 2y agoExcellent idea, I find it really useful.
- kyrylo 2y agoIt’s my pleasure!
- ge96 2y agoI wonder if you can scan sites and check for rails. I know if there is an error the dump if visible can tell you it's rails like ActiveRecord
- AugurCognito 2y agoThere exist websites like https://builtwith.com https://builtwith.com so the answer to your question is yes.
- kamikazeturtles 2y agoWhile I like frameworks like Rails and Django, Golang with AI makes me very productive. Especially because of how Golang codebases don't use too many dependencies so an LLM never recommends code that has an old dependency or mismatched version... I'm just curious, how well does Ruby integrate with AI tools?
- fchief 2y agoIt works great with AI tools. Checkout the LangChain or Boxcars gem.
- correlator 2y agoThis is a great point. I often ask LLMs which coding language they are most proficient in, and Python is the most typical response. This has makes me want to write more Python.
- hansvm 2y agoKeep in mind, LLMs can't introspect. They integrate your prompt with their training data. If Python is an extremely popular programming language people like to write about using (it is), you'll expect a lot of people to state that Python is their most proficient language and for that to make its way into the training data. When you ask the LLM, you'll get Python as an answer some fraction of the time and other languages some other fraction. Those answers are orthogonal to how good the LLM actually is though. In the training data, you'd like a sufficiently robust sample of code (which Python should have) without most of the code being terrible (which Python doesn't have in the wild). Mind you, IME they do better with Python than very new languages, and they do better with Python tooling than whatever maven build garbage you might have to deal with, but that's faint praise.
- bb88 2y agoI use MS Copilot in python and it's really good. Particularly at writing unit test cases. Unit tests are a major win for LLMs.
- 2y ago
- dcdc123 2y agoCanvas LMS is built on rails. It is open source, too.
- racl101 2y agoCertain cities it's like a Rails desert. I'd love to get a job using it but it's slim pickings. It's either .NET or PHP and maybe some Python and maybe some Node most of the time for web dev.
- ksec 2y agoSee https://toprubycompanies.info https://toprubycompanies.info
- sam0x17 2y agowould love to be able to see them sorted by [insert 2025 equivalent of Alexa traffic rankings here]
- ksec 2y agoCookpad. Generally speaking you will find Rails being used more in Business or SaaS rather than consumer.
- thatguyagain 2y agoRails 8 made me love Rails again after a few years working with other tools. The new direction is just perfect, specially for solo developers. The 'solid trifecta' in combination with the simplicity of using sqlite3, the new built in auth solution, Kamal... everything, so f*ing good.
- skullone 2y agoI've been out of rails for more than a decade, ended up mostly with Django, but I always kinda miss rails. But Django has treated me so well, just wish async and python in general had more legs on this side
- dewey 2y ago> sqlite3 I know sqlite3 is great, but I've always found it much more annoying to use it on a server for small side projects than just using Postgres where I could just connect to the prod instance from my local machine and run some queries to look at the data. With sqlite I'd always have to sync files, set up volumes, make sure permissions are correct vs. just setting an environment variable to a PG instance.
- marvstazar 2y agoFrom what I understand, the sqlite3 comment was made it context of the Solid libraries. Basically common Redis-backed functionality can now be sqlite3-backed instead. I do share your preference on using Postgres as the main database. Having that as the main db with sqlite3 used for auxiliary functionality sounds great.
- dhamidi 2y agoIt's not much different than with Postgres: ssh your-server sqlite3 /tmp/path/to/your/db.sqlite3 Or if you're using Kamal, then the choice of database is completely transparent: kamal app exec -i --reuse bin/rails console
- kyrylo 2y agoWe Use Rails uses SQLite, by the way
- salzig 2y agobtw, there is also https://usingrails.com https://usingrails.com
- cjoelrun 2y agoThought the url said using Grails.
- devKnight 2y agoI've always been interested in rails, even though my career has gone the JS/TS route. Think i might finally take the plunge and try to build some random stuff with it. See how far i can get by looking at code examples and asking gpt "how do you do x in rails" etc. Really love that it seems to just be a complete toolbox, especially for a solo project. Also seeing more and more rails roles out there, but obviously don't have 5+ years with the framework
- dewey 2y agoCan only encourage you, I'm mostly working with Go but all my side projects are with Rails which I've only started a few years ago. It's a lot of fun. I'm not a big fan of watching tutorials, but more of learning by doing but I signed up for https://gorails.com https://gorails.com when I started out and it was very helpful to get an overview.
- _mlbt 2y agoI’m similarly interested in learning Rails. Does anyone here have any recommendations for free or at least very cheap Rails hosting for a toy app just for learning purposes? I’m looking for a PaaS offering since I don’t have the time to secure and manage a VPS.
- 3pt14159 2y agoHeroku is decent although I don't like some of the tweaks you can't do with it. For example, setting variables in postgres is neutered.
- WaxProlix 2y agoI haven't used their Rails hosting, but I have liked Fly.io for other PaaS-y things before. Heroku is technically still around. https://fly.io/docs/rails/getting-started/ https://fly.io/docs/rails/getting-started/
- nimonian 2y agoYou could probably dockerize it and stick it on render.com
- neuroelectron 2y ago>website down oh deer.
- kyrylo 2y agoTraffic has increased significantly, but everything seems to be working fine.
- xyzzy4747 2y agoIf they had used Next.js with a typical deployment this wouldn't happen since it uses a static CDN cache for all pages.
- askonomm 2y agoThat one bloated horrible JS nightmare that everyone avoids? No thanks.
- wavemode 2y agoThe Search tab is taking close to 30s to load... I'm suspecting this site itself also uses Rails
- marban 2y ago2006 called — they said scaffolding is still the cheat code for building something working, stable, simple, and maintainable.
- rockyj 2y agoThe app does not load for now. I guess they used Rails :)
- inthebin 2y agoCan someone provide a reason for why anyone should be using Rails? I'm always curious why people love context switching between multiple programming languages.
- to-too-two 2y ago1) You love the Ruby programming language. 2) It's battle-tested. Tried and true. Batteries included. Can have a web app with most functionality needed running in minutes. 3) There are more reasons, but there are other good options as well. No reason to use Rails if you're not interested in Ruby.
- flats 2y agoAs opposed to using JavaScript on the front end & back end? That benefit of JS has always seemed a bit overrated to me—the context for front-end & server-side JS is pretty darn different, too. Anyway, Ruby & Rails are such a joy to use that, at least for me, the fact that it’s written in a different language than the one we need in the browser is a non-issue.
- thinkingemote 2y ago
- maxehmookau 2y agoBeen using Rails professionally for 13 years (currently at GitLab) and I still don't think anything else beats it for developer happiness and productivity. It cuts through all the mess of modern web development so well and makes turning an idea in to something deployable incredibly easy.
- cloverich 2y agoHey there's some selection bias going on there! Rails is great for consistency and even better if its your jam. Its stable and high quality and still headed in a great direction. Its a great choice. Especially if you can work in it long term, and pay its learning curve only once. ...but as someone using it in Anger for a few years now, I long for the day I can say goodbye to it and never look back, for all the usual reasons.
- whstl 2y agoI was also using it in anger until recently, and I'm really glad I got out of it. But I disagree that it's consistent or that it leads to consistency. The "Rails way" or "DHH way" of building apps is indeed consistent, but most big teams eschew this in the name of more complicated (and less consistently applied) patterns. It follows the Anna Karenina principle to a T. All good codebases are alike and follow the Rails way; each bad codebase is bad in its own way and uses bullshit like Trailblazer, Active Interactors, over-engineered Service Objects or some other bullshit. Sometimes all of them at the same time.
- maxehmookau 2y agoI should say that I've not been using Rails _exclusively_ for that period. But it's the one framework that sticks around in my toolkit no matter what. It's what I reach for in any new project by default.
- swat535 2y agoI’ve also been working with Rails for many years now but I disagree I think developer and happiness are subjective and I’ve seen great applications being built by many people in various languages. The key is picking the tool you are most proficient with and one that also aligns with your technical requirements. I certainly wouldn’t build a Discord with Rails..
- aqme28 2y agoI really miss using Rails. It is seriously so enjoyable to quickly build stuff with it.
- npalli 2y agoThis site won't load for me, that in itself strongly suggests it was built on Ruby on Rails.
- evantbyrne 2y agoWebsites crashing under unusually high load typically has more to do with a lack of caching or undersized db than choice of backend.
- yesdocs 2y agoThis has been my experience as well. Rails can do a lot, but it also allows you to develop junk. Most sites built in Ruby end up in the latter category, especially if built by a team that doesn’t use basic software architecture patterns.
- Alifatisk 2y agoHNs hug of death does not apply to Rails only
- xyzzy4747 2y agoWell actually, if they had used Next.js deployed via Vercel or something similar, it would have been statically cached on a CDN and prevents issues like this. But because they want to use older technology that's more difficult to cache and proxy, this happens.
- clivestaples 2y agoCan you point us to your Vercel apps and what kind of traffic you're dealing with?
- matthewmacleod 2y agoGod, this reminds me of the worst sort of discussions I’ve had with people who don’t understand the technologies they are working with. I’m sorry for being so negative, but “older technology that's more difficult to cache and proxy” is just nonsense.
- hk1337 2y agoI've always loved ruby. Sinatra was my jam long ago but after awhile it felt like just remaking Rails when I could just Rails. Then datamapper project went defunct and needing to use ActiveRecord if I didn't want manually do sql seemed even more like I should just use Rails.
- sagolikasoppor 2y agoI have always looked at Rails with love, but since I mainly build heavy client side SPA apps behind a login it has never been a good choice for me.
- Lio 2y agoI've done both. One of the really fun things with Rails 8 is getting PWAs out of the box and using Hotwire for Native apps with not much more work. It wont cover every use case but for what I do it's amazing. https://hotwire.io/ https://hotwire.io/
- joshlemer 2y agoLaravel with Inertia.js seems like a really great solution to get 95% of the productivity of a MPA and 95% of the benefits of a SPA.
- gvurrdon 2y agoThe main application I have to work with now ended up, for various reasons, as a Rails API with a Vue client. The Rails part has been easy to maintain and adapt to users' frequent changes, the main issues being feature requests for very complicated queries which then end up being slow. Vue has taken up a lot of time with the migration from 2 -> 3 (still not finished).
- xyzzy4747 2y agoI don't know why anyone would want to code with a language that isn't statically type safe at compile time in this day and age.
- Alifatisk 2y agoDoesn’t tools like Sorbet and RBS help?
- xyzzy4747 2y agoWhy use a 3rd party add-on solution instead of using something better in the first place?
- ricketycricket 2y agoYou mean like Typescript, an add-on that transpiles to Javascript?
- askonomm 2y agoI'm sure they meant an actual statically typed language. I agree that dynamic languages are fun and productive ... until the codebase becomes big and complex, and then not knowing what shape any data is quickly becomes a nightmare to understand and debug.
- Alifatisk 2y ago> not knowing what shape any data is quickly becomes a nightmare to understand and debug I remember when I experienced exactly this, it kind of flipped switch in my head which made me love static typing.
- Alifatisk 2y agoRBS comes by default with Ruby, Sorbet is 3rd party.
- 2y ago
- ramesh31 2y agoIt's such a shame that a big successful Rails or Django equivalent never really materialized in the Node world. It's not like nobody tried. There were so many times it seemed like one was gaining traction, then it would be abandoned or zombified or commercialized, and it just never happened. I really can't understand why.
- reducesuffering 2y agoIt's essentially Next.js. I believe the only thing missing is ORM, but you have choices, for better or worse, in Prisma and Drizzle. You do have to pick an auth lib (most use Next-Auth aka Auth.js) but Rails needed auth lib until Rails 8 a couple months ago. The traction behind Next.js is so large, it's much bigger than Rails, Django, and Laravel for new projects the last couple years: https://trends.stackoverflow.co/?tags=next.js,ruby-on-rails,django,laravel https://trends.stackoverflow.co/?tags=next.js,ruby-on-rails,...
- joshlemer 2y agoLaravel still seems a lot more fleshed out on the back end. Job queues, task scheduling, notifications, migrations, email. Seems to be a lot more of a cohesive package, everything working together.
- ramesh31 2y agoIndeed Next is the closest we've gotten, but see: commercialized. The default path for Rails and Django is not a vendor locked in cloud offering; they are truly FOSS projects. It seems like its that mentality which died out more than anything else, really. Also "just picking an ORM" is actually one of the key killer features of Django/Rails in general. There is no fully batteries included equivalent for JS land sadly.
- rizalp 2y agoHave you checked https://adonisjs.com/ https://adonisjs.com/ ? Seems it follows the Rails / Laravel way of doing things
- Alifatisk 2y agoRails is truly experiencing a renaissance and after giving it a try, I understand why
- douchescript 2y agoWhat’s the best way to use JavaScript on rails these days? I’ve been using rails for over 20 years and still love it but the JavaScript story has always been in flux in bad ways. I don’t like the turbo stuff or stimulus. Basically just want to be able to add some nice charts, and some enhancements like confirmation for links. Basically just build admins with it so the caching for partial html just isn’t part of the game. Looked at upgrading to rails 8 now but the javascript in last version of rails was fragmented and complicated, so looking to find a good way to do it in a standard way now, hopefully next version of rail’s doesn’t change everything again.
- itsthecourier 2y agojust use importmaps https://guides.rubyonrails.org/working_with_javascript_in_rails.html https://guides.rubyonrails.org/working_with_javascript_in_ra... - Adding npm Packages with importmap-rails To add new packages to your import map-powered application, run the bin/importmap pin command from your terminal: $ bin/importmap pin react react-dom Then, import the package into application.js as usual: import ReactDOM from "react-dom"
- douchescript 2y agoBut how do you integrate and turn on at a specific page/controller view? Look for a specific dom id?
- douchescript 2y agoIt would be a valid thing if there was a documented way to convert a generic node package to import map. Not much stuff in that importmap ecosystem - seems doa.
- breckenedge 2y agoThe fragmentation is more an implication of the ever changing landscape of JS frameworks and build tools than Rails. For me, Stimulus adds just the right amount of structure over Vanilla JS. And Turbo/Hotwire feels like building skyscrapers with wood vs. steel.
- tamersalama 2y agoBack in the day, I remember an application that 'analyzed' websites for their Rails hallmarks. I don't know if Rails apps are as distinct nowadays.
- Syntaf 2y agoCool site! Love seeing what others have built using rails. I've been working on a membership management platform [1] using Rails + Hotwire Turbo & Stimulus and I can't imagine how long it would have taken me using other frameworks around. Want a rich text editor? Just use action text. Want document storage? Active storage is easy. Job queues? Mailers? Caching? Integration testing? All easy to do. I love that Rails is "omakase", once you lean into the ecosystem it's great that most things just... work. [1] https://embolt.app https://embolt.app
- vivzkestrel 2y agocan we get a web apps built with svelte/sveltekit?
- werdnapk 2y agoI've used nothing but Rails since about 2004. Of course I've been integrating and playing with various JS frameworks over the same time period, but the only things that's remained consistent is Rails as the base. I've gone through at least 4 or 5 different JS frameworks in that time and that aspect of development has grown rather tiresome.
- stux 2y agoRails definitely seems optimized for creating code, but how is it at maintaining code? I've never used it, but it seems like Ruby's dynamic types would make it really challenging to do large refactors. What techniques do rails developers use?
- ysavir 2y ago(10+ years with Rails) The key to maintaining a healthy Rails codebase is to make most of your code independent of Rails. Rails is great at the basics: Handling requests and composing views. It's okay at storage stuff. But it's not good at handling complex usecases, managing JS, etc. This isn't to say that you can't use Rails if you're making complicated stuff, or using JS, it just means you need to know when to keep your code to Rails's structures and when to write your own structures that you then invoke from within Rails.
- globular-toast 2y agoOne thing I find frustrating with Django is there's not really a place to put business logic. Ask 3 Django people and you'll get 3 different answers, and often different answers from the same person! That's not a good architecture IMO. It should be obvious where stuff goes. Some say it's not Django's concern, Django is just a web framework, but Django doesn't sit nicely at the edge of an architecture where it belongs at all. Is Rails better in this respect?
- cudgy 2y agoRails is probably one of the most complete, turnkey frameworks I’ve ever used for web development. When I first encountered it, within a day or two, I was building full stack crud apps. However, what shocked me, having come from a C/C++ background were the thousands of dependencies for the most simple of apps. This scared me as how could I possibly understand the security holes and inner workings of all these dependencies. Another problem I ran into was the tendency of rails developers to create monolithic applications with little separation between the UI, middle tier layer, and the data model layer. When I would be writing client side apps and interfacing with rails back ends, The rails teams would always implement new functionality into the website and then separately add functionality to an API. I think this comes down to the way people learn to develop in rails as rails teaches a monolithic method. I would always try to point out that creating an API where all of the logic was held, would make life so much easier for them, and they would agree, but continue to build The monolithic website with a separate API.